Huawei MateBook 14 2020 AMD
A more powerful, more stylish and more expensive version of the splendid Honor MagicBook 14
SCORE
Range starts at: £574 (£689 inc VAT) Model tested: £792 (£950 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com
When Huawei designed the MateBook 14, it didn’t break the mould; it simply passed it to Honor and let its sister brand create the MagicBook 14 ( see p82). That cut-price alternative steals much of the MateBook 14’s glory, but there is no disputing which is the classier laptop.
For a start, the MateBook’s screen stretches all the way from the top to the bottom of the lid, providing you with a glorious extra area to work in: the 3:2 aspect ratio and 2,160 x 1,400 resolution makes it feasible to work side by side on documents without squinting or constantly having to zoom in.
This is a far better panel, too, hitting a peak brightness of 396cd/m2 in our benchmarks with a contrast ratio of 1,606:1, and backing it up with excellent colour reproduction: 94% sRGB coverage and an average Delta E of 0.52. The only thing we don’t like is that the screen is very glossy, which means that overhead lights are sometimes distracting.
The other big point of difference is the CPU choice, with AMD’s eightcore and 16-thread Ryzen 7 4800H in place here. Combined with a hearty 16GB of RAM and extremely fast 512GB SSD – which scored 2,834MB/sec in our sequential read test – it stormed to the top of the PC Pro benchmark table. Only the M1 MacBook Air prevented it from taking the same position in Geekbench 5’s multicore test.
The MateBook is less outstanding for games, but there’s still enough power here to tackle less demanding titles. A 65fps average in Dirt:
Showdown at 1080p emphasises this fact, with 37fps in F1 2020 and 31fps in Metro: Last Light. At the screen’s native resolution, those results dropped to 51fps, 29fps and 21fps respectively, so you may need to dial down quality settings for smooth frame rates in your favourite games.
Even with all this power inside it lasted for 8hrs 22mins in our videorundown tests, and note the highly portable USB-C power supply. At a slender 15.9mm, the MateBook slips easily into a bag, and while it’s heavier than some rivals this only emphasises the solidity of construction.
Overall, this is a beautifully built laptop. With an excellent keyboard and spacious touchpad, its only downsides are the webcam (which pops up from the keyboard whenever you wish to check your nasal hair) and, compared to the MagicBook 14, the price.